Archive for the ‘Collaborator profiles’ Category

I’m Carmen Sillero (Masters Degree, Agronomical Engineering), Head of International Programmes at the Agency of Innovation and Development of Andalusia (Agencia IDEA). Andalusia is the southernmost region in Spain, on the south west vertex of the European Union. Most populous (8.4 million inhabitants) and second largest of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities (87,957 km2).

WHAT IS YOU JOB?

I am responsible for the international activities at Agencia IDEA. That means, mainly the management of a range of territorial cooperation programmes among the European regions, funded by the European Union, and the foresight of international opportunities to better connect andalusian economic agents in the global market. As an Innovation Agency, attached to the Regional Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Science, our objectives are:
 Promotion of public-private partnerships.
 Development of the spirit of enterprise and innovation.
 Design and implementation of quality support services.
 Provision of capital resources for the support and finance of businesses.
 Establishment of an appropriate administrative environment adapted for the creation of business.

One of our main tasks is to foster the andalusian participation in international cooperating networks, mainly those focused on innovation and business cooperation.

WHAT IS EXCITING YOU AT PRESENT?

Spain is suffering the tougher crisis since the 1940’s, after the civil war. Although the huge effort my region has made in the last 20 years on improving human capacities and creating knowledge facilities to support a new economic model, the current economic situation is forcing andalusian firms to close and therefore many jobs are being destroyed.

Is in this moment when our Regional Government is asked by the European Commission to propose a new strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, by which our territorial challenges should be faced. This strategy must be based on:
 The specialisation of our productive sector, in line with the improvement of our R&D capacities and the enhancement of our human resources skills.
 Strengthening of territorial cooperation.
 Linking our firms into global value chains.

WHAT ARE YOUR TOP 3 TIPS ON HOW TO COLLABORATE?

1 Engagement on the achievement of a clear and shared common target.
2. Mutual understanding. Different cultures, different approaches, but the same goal.
3. Hard work. Resilience.

WHAT COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS WOULD INTEREST COCKATOO READERS?

We are a Regional Development Agency, thus glad to share experiences and develop common projects with other public institutions re promotion, support, funding of innovative SMEs, focused in internationalization.

Given Andalusian industrial capacities and R&D strengths, our work on healthy food, biotechnology, tourism and renewable energy, could be very interesting areas for collaboration.

(Carmen is a tireless collaborator – she was a key organizer of the OECD/EC Smart Specialisation Strategies workshops in Seville in November 2011. Agencia IDEA is an ideal partner for facilitating trade and investment with Spanish companies. Contact her at csillero@agenciaidea.es – Editor)

I am located in Dunedin, a city with a population of 122,000 (25,000 who are students). I have worked extensively in the private and public sectors and currently am employed by the Dunedin City Council’s Economic Development Unit as a Business Development Advisor. Dunedin is an incredible city with a reputation as having NZ’s leading University (University of Otago). The city is home to a growing number of innovative companies and entrepreneurs who have easy access to smart educational personnel and facilities. Dunedin is also the gateway to Central Otago where vineyards flourish in the hot summers and ski-fields ensure fun in the abundant clear winter days.

What’s your job?

I work as an advocate for business in Dunedin. The city’s Economic Development Unit assists business through:§Helping with business planning, evaluation and mentoring§Helping promote skilled employment vacancies§Helping fund market research and new market opportunities including exporting§Assisting with linkages to R & D subsidies and potential investors §Helping key industries network to enhance business opportunities e.g. cluster initiatives §Rates Relief for new or expanding business

What’s exciting you at present?

The Economic Development Unit is currently involved in a number of exciting and innovative projects:§Innovative on-campus program to assist students with their ideas, start-ups (www.audacious.co.nz) Involves collaboration between University Business School and student projects.§Collaborative project between the University/Polytechnic/Economic Development Unit and business in setting up a ‘Design Institute’ in the city. Dunedin has a growing reputation as a ‘design’ hub.§Collaborative project between the University/Port Otago/Engineering Dunedin and the Economic Development Unit regarding oil and gas exploration in the Great South Basin.

What are your top 3 tips on how to collaborate? §Integrity in all relationships§Listening in all relationships§Realism in all relationships

What collaborative projects do you have to interest Cockatoo readers

We have a number of clusters (Engineering, ICT, Fashion, Biotech, Food, Education). Growing or emerging businesses are members of these clusters. They would benefit hugely by some cross pollination with other business clusters.If anyone has ideas and examples that have worked with putting mixed cluster groups together, I would value your opinions. Any other thoughts on collaborative advantages please contact me.

Who and where are you? I am the new Economic Development Manager for the Sydney Hills located in north-west Sydney and in the short time I have been here, it is obvious that there are many exciting growth opportunities and challenges in creating wealth, a diverse economy and new jobs. Over the last 15 years, I have worked in various economic development roles in both the public and private sector also in Queensland and Canberra and I see the task of economic development is to think regionally to compete.Economic Development is complex and to be successful, my experience tells me that it works best when partnerships of business and industry together with various government agencies collaborate in areas such as investment attraction, regional marketing and branding, capacity building and trade development.

What’s your job? Causing things too happen!!! Facilitating long term success which can flow from the cooperation and coordination of many individual organisations working together in the community and business interest in the following types of key areas:Single Voice: Support regional unity by operating at the big picture, strategic level ensuring a single voice for coordinated responses on issues requiring regional economic development action.Strategic Planning: Ensure that the strategic direction is agreed with key stakeholders and identify and implement actions for the key regional economic development issues.Trade Promotion and Market Identification: Work with key stakeholders and industry sectors and business networks to develop and execute a professional collaborative marketing effort including identification of potential market segments for trade promotion activities.Business Retention and Expansion: As 80% of new employment is typically generated in a region by existing industry, develop programs to work with industry and business networks to identify potential opportunities for growth and capacity building.Business Attraction: Work with key stakeholders to establish a clear, business-oriented identity for the region for business attraction purposes.

What’s exciting you at present? The formation of the new national professional association for economic development professionals called ED Australia. Having had a long association with several overseas bodies (e.g. IEDC), the benefits that can flow to the profession should be considerable if we can excite our peers to get involved.

What are your top 3 tips on how to collaborate?1. The single key element is strong leadership of the participants (what I call the train drivers and guards).2. Stop talking about it, and let the train leave the station, and make sure you have a rail line to follow (plan) – otherwise the carriages of interest will head off in different directions.3. Finally, it is normal for derailments to occur from time to time – so don’t get too down when it does!

Who and where are you? Refugee from corporate life, formerly working in Regional Development and on industry cluster development internationally, including the music and film strategy for New Orleans. Currently Cultural Strategy Manager at Milton Keynes, 50 miles north and 38 minutes by fast train from London. This is one of Europe’s fastest growing cities, projected to double in size and by 2031 be the 10th largest city in the UK.

What’s your job?My job is to un-quo the status, to enable new forms of connection and collaboration across the public and private sector. These new frameworks for work and cross sector connections ensure that cultural delivery is effective. The goal is to have the creative and cultural sector recognised as an important contributor to the economies of particular regions. Milton Keynes is effectively a ‘city region’ created by the government’s Milton Keynes South Midlands Growth Agenda for 37,000 new homes. Our newly finalised Cultural Strategy has many private sector lead partners for action points and is a unique collaboration. The Culture Team I head influences the planning infrastructure guidelines to ensure that they provide enablement for a rich cultural offer to emerge – from grass roots to business attraction.

What’s exciting you at present?The successful negotiation with the local shopping centre (the longest in Europe – 3 million visitation annually) for a Culture Shop free of rent and service charge and an exhibition space with a £30K annual operating budget. With the business community we are using latest technology blue tooth servers that offer phone content downloads, planning that the Culture Shop will profile the creative excellence of a place which is 10th in the nation for patents despite a small population of 219,000. The Shop will be an experiential place where our company base can showcase inventions, projects and plans as well as being a general showcase for culture and for our 19 potential athletes – both Olympians and Paralympians. With the London Olympiad approaching in 2008, and having had Jude Kelly, lead on the Cultural Olympics work with our early strategy building, as a community we are poised to seize the ‘spoils to the quick and well organized’ that the 2012 games offer as an opportunity.The 2012 Games have a focus on the youth of the UK connecting with the youth of the world under three areas: compete, create or collaborate. So if anyone has any suggestions that can use your business base to good effect in enlightened self interest (i.e. that the company benefits but so does the community), then please contact me.Having secured a Milton Keynes South Midlands sub-regional audit of the creative industries, by September we will have the data from which to focus creative industry cluster activities.

Your Top 3 tips on how to collaborate?1.Good collaboration is born of trust. Trust comes from individuals ‘reading’ your own integrity and making a judgement call on which to base the level of their commitment. To establish trust takes time and a willingness to be frank and open about the reality as well as addressing the political ‘face’ of the project. Get to know your potential partners as individuals.2.Make it clear that enlightened self interest is to be encouraged, not vilified. Making profit from the experience is not a sin. Not ensuring fair return IS a sin.3.Establish a clear brief at the outset. Form follows function. Most problems come from an unclear brief that causes a structure for the collaboration that is not ‘fit-for-purpose’. If everyone clearly understands the result commonly agreed (stress on the word ‘agreed’) then the enabling mechanisms become clearer.

What collaborative projects do you have that would interest Cockatoo readers? We are a fast growing, ‘can do city’ with great connections to the London 2012 planners…PLEASE send us your suggestions for collaborations.Contact me please at Paquita.Lamacraft@Milton.keynes.gov.uk

I am currently a freelance consultant, specialist in regional and national innovation systems design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Previously, I was Director of Innovation to the Regional council of Lorraine. I am associated with two main consultant agencies – Technopolis-Group, implanted in many locations in Europe (its headquarters being in Brighton-UK) and European company of strategic intelligence, present in Paris, Brighton and in different Far East countries.

What’s your job?

As a freelance consultant, I work for different projects on behalf of my clients e.g. cross channel (North-West French region, South UK), operational programmes (in the European commission framework), analysis of innovative projects supported by EU financing, external dimension of EU Competitiveness, coaching of the region of Silesia for the implementation of their regional innovation strategy, cluster policy for the Urban area of Nancy.

What’s exciting you at present?

After more than 30 years of activity in research and innovation, from private sector to regional authorities, I am very interested by the construction of global approach of the question of Innovations systems at the construction of the regional advantage.I devote a specific attention to the question of Anticipative decision making (see below) and to the question of the development of the Triple helix at regional level.

Your Top 3 tips on how to collaborate?

need for open minded listening to the ideas/proposals of potential or already active partners; don’t consider other’s ideas without understanding why they are expressed

explain your ideas and their basis – don’t accept other’s ideas just to be a nice person.

look for consensus acceptable for all parties, but do not find consensus at any price – be a demanding partner.

Industry development, strategy, investment, business collaboration, export market development and regional cluster development. I was formerly Industry Strategist for the City of Playford (South Australia) between 1999 – February 2007 (during this time undertook selected consulting projects).

What’s exciting you at present?

I am currently lead consultant to a cluster project in Denmark, which has set the pace along with other Nordic economies regarding innovation. Denmark ranks No. 1 on the World Bank Knowledge Economy Index, so it’s great to be working with smart people with smart ideas to boot.

Your Top 3 tips on how to collaborate?

1.each industry and each company has its own DNA – so forget your manual!2.CEOs have visions and are leaders – don’t bore them with trying to write the perfect business plan or strategy – inspire and challenge!3.when taking to CFOs about collaboration, talk about profits and market share.

Who and where are you? I hold the David Goldman chair of Business Innovation at Newcastle University Business School in the UK, and I am also director of the University’s Institute for Policy and Practice (IPP), and a new research centre on Knowledge, Innovation, Technology and Enterprise (KITE).

What’s your job? My role in the Business School is to lead a strand of activity around innovation management and policy – my post was endowed by the family of one of the founders of Sage PLC, a locally headquartered but multinational software company whose origins lay within the University.Over the last year I have been leading the development of the KITE centre. This brings together several groups of researchers around the Business School all addressing aspects of innovation and enterprise – currently we have 23 staff plus a growing number of associates. The research themes include innovation policy, clusters, innovations in public service delivery and information systems, university engagement with industry and regions, complex project innovation and entrepreneurship.

What’s exciting you at present? Currently my personal interests are in the development of multi-level governance systems for science and innovation policies – how governments at state, regional or local level are engaging with local partners and with national (and at times supra-national) government in developing policies for innovation. Increasingly this involves an engagement with research investment, as economic development strategies focus on science-based industries such as biotech, and research is seen as a magnet for attracting investment and talent. As a result, I am developing partnerships with academics and others around the world to better understand the way places/cities position themselves in global flows of knowledge, investment and talent in order to see what works.

Your Top 3 Tips on how to collaborate? There are similar lessons for collaboration in any context. You need to understand what your partner needs and wants and how mutual working can achieve their aims as well as your own. You need to give as well as take to establish trust in a relationship. You need to take time, and not make assumptions about success or failure when the first problems emerge.If anyone wants to develop collaboration then they should go to http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ipp/research/kite.htm .

Who and where are you? I work for the University of Western Sydney, College of Business, School of Management.Based in Campbelltown, NSW which is in Sydney’s Greater West where there are a large number of SME across a range of industries.

What’s your job? I am currently an Associate Lecturer with the University of Western Sydney.I am also a part time PhD student with my research topic looking at the barriers and drivers of Clusters.My research has been linked to a project in which the university was a research partner, the project now completed was called the RELINK project.

What’s exciting you at present? Finding answers to the following. How does the Australian cluster experience vary from that which is reported from overseas? Are facilitators essential for the success of collaborations? Can geography be overcome in order to operate a successful cluster?

What are your top 3 tips on how to collaborate?1. Remember that collaboration has different impacts (risks and benefits) for small, medium and large firms.2. The use of a facilitator does not replace trust between firms.3. Learn from the experience of other clusters in Australian markets.

What collaborative projects do you have that would interest Cockatoo readers? I am currently analysing some data collected from the RELINK as part of my PhD.Hopefully I will be able to report on this (through journal articles) in the near future.

Mick truly is the Godfather of clustering in SA. He brought in Doug Henton and Kim Walesh of Collaborative Economics (Palo Alto), and the three of them laid the groundwork.

Who and where are you?I am Director of Economic Analysis and Policy with the Department of Trade and Economic Development in South Australia. Over the past decade I pioneered cluster development in South Australia – leveraging and adapting the Collaborative Economics model of industry leadership and engagement to foster collaboration (www.coecon.com ) – and played a lead role in SA Business Vision 2010, a collaborative initiative engaging business, government, university and community leaders in the economic rejuvenation of South Australia.

What is your job? My role is to develop the economic development framework for the State and champion policy responses that will eliminate impediments for business, drive economic competitiveness and assist companies to leverage new opportunities emerging through exciting growth in the mineral resources, defence, advanced manufacturing, ICT, biotechnology and international education sectors.

What is exciting you at present? The economic transition underway in South Australia which is driving convergence between the economic growth agenda and the social inclusion agenda as we move from the challenge of ‘finding jobs for people’ to the high quality problem of ‘finding people for jobs’. I am now particularly focused on workforce issues, especially promoting pathways to science, engineering and technology careers, including stimulating increased study of maths and science in schools.

Top 3 tips for collaboration1.Enlightened self-interest remains the driver – commercial imperatives and opportunities will prevail over altruism or collaboration as an ideology.2.Collaboration is a social process – a contact sport. It is all about people and relationships. Collaborative projects around non-competitive agendas such as workforce, infrastructure etc allow people to mix, build rapport and trust and explore potential to work together commercially.3.Active facilitation and availability of legal/commercial tools and processes make it easier and remove some of the mystique around commercial collaboration – but they don’t eliminate the people issues.

We first met Arvin at TCI Glasgow (or was it Varese?)and since then he has been a wonderful source of advice and knowledge on Canadian development issues, especially but not limited to the food industry. He is a true collaborator.

Who and where are you?

My name is Arvin Jelliss, and I currently reside in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. I previously resided in Toronto and Guelph, Ontario, and prior to that in London and Humberside U.K.

What’s your job?

I’m currently a Senior Economist with the Science and Innovation Directorate in Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC). Prior to joining AAFC I worked in a number of other Canadian federal departments, including the Departments of Finance, Regional Economic/Regional Industrial Expansion, Energy, Mines, and Resources, and Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Before joining the federal public service I worked as an economic consultant to First Nations’ organizations in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, Canada, and as a systems analyst in the U.K.

What’s exciting you at present?

Three areas of particular interest at the present time are

(1) the increasing range of potential innovation and commercialization opportunities associated with the application of new scientific and technological knowledge throughout agri-based sectors, clusters, and value chains, and their implications for sectoral, rural, regional, and national development;

(2) the increased recognition being directed towards the relationships between food, diet, nutrition, and human health;

(3) the increased interest being shown in the connections between clusters, regional innovation systems, and approaches to constructed advantage, and how this increased understanding could contribute to improving innovation performance, augmenting economic development, and enhancing income generation.

What are your top 3 tips on how to collaborate?

Three areas I consider of importance are: (1) scan for collaborations widely as well as narrowly; (2) look for win-win situations, and (3) communicate by listening as much as by speaking.